EU: Secret resolution
01 November 1992
On the day the Asylum Bill was published (22 October), a secret draft resolution, prepared by the Ad Hoc Group of Immigration Ministers under British presidency, was leaked to BBC Radio 4. The "Draft resolution on manifestly unfounded applications for asylum", dated 1 July and due to be voted on at the Edinburgh summit in December, sets out the framework within which asylum applications should be dealt with. Those who fear human rights violations, it says, should if possible stay in their own country and "seek protection or redress from their own authorities". If they have to leave, they should seek protection in the first safe country they come to: "intercontinental movements are seldom necessary for protection". Finally, refugee status "should not be granted merely because levels of security, economic opportunity or individual liberty are below European ones". Only those complying with the strict terms of the Geneva Convention - those whose life or liberty is endangered by persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group - should be eligible for protection. The resolution, if acted upon, sounds the death-knell to Third World refugees' chances of getting asylum in Europe, and it proposes to exclude from protection all those fleeing war or civil war, or those whose persecution (rape, beatings or torture) does not actually threaten their lives.
The effect of the proposal would mean that people fleeing from Uganda to Kenya would be expected to stay there as it is considered a "safe" country and not fly to the EC. Kurds in Turkey would be expected to exhaust all available legal remedies within that country before applying to enter the EC. This is especially difficult as Turkey is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights with the right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights - a very lengthy process. Similarly those fleeing from civil war, for example in Sri Lanka or Yugoslavia, would be excluded.
The clear intention is to put the clock back twenty years, to the time when only deposed leaders or those with friends among the powerful got sanctuary in the West.